Friday, July 31, 2009

The reissue of Rudolph Wurlitzer's first novel, Nog, officially drops tomorrow, August 1.

Today, in his Deconstruction Zone column at PopMatters, Rodger Jacobs has an incredibly rich article called 'Rudy Wurlitzer, Bob Dylan, Bloody Sam, and the Jornado del Muerto' that draws on a wide variety of influences while orbiting the Wurlitzer myth. Touching on Joan Didion and Robert Stone, how Bob Dylan became involved in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and the subsequent chaos that nearly destroyed that film, Jacobs has some nice praise for "a true American master of literary form."

"If all art is at once surface and symbol, as Oscar Wilde suggests in the preface to Picture of Dorian Gray, then Wurlitzer's 1969 debut novel is the ultimate expression of that statement, a writhing copperhead snake that is difficult to hold onto but spellbinding to observe in its raw, natural beauty."